Concerning N. S. Polyansky’s Letter

Published:PravdaNo. 118, September 15, 1912.

      Signed:Fr..

      Published according to thePravdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1975],

      Moscow,Volume 18,

      pages326-327.Translated:Stepan ApresyanTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

N.S.Polyansky’s letter from the countryside, published in
this issue ofPravda, poses a very interesting question. It would
be desirable for the peasants themselves to comment on this question as
often as possible.

Forour part, we consider it necessary to point out the following.

N.S.Polyansky is perfectly right in saying that only an “idle
parasite” would regard the volost meeting as a gathering of fools. Only
the peasantsthemselvescan decide which form of land tenure and
landownership is to be preferred in a particular locality. All interference
on the part of the law or the administration in the unfettered use of the
land by the peasants is a survival of the serf-owning system. Such
interference can only do harm; it can only humiliate and insult the
peasant.

Aworker-peasant vividly showed, in his letter published inPravdaNo. 38, the absurd red tape resulting from such
interference.

Letus now see what view the tens of millions of people who are for
ever working and are for ever being exploited should take of the question:khutoror village commune?

Whatthese people have to worry about is not at all the choice between
thekhutorand the village commune. They must worry about who is
exploiting them and how they can lighten or do away with this exploitation.

InEuropean Russia, for example, 30,000 of the big land lords own
70,000,000 dessiatines of land, and 10,000,000 poor peasants own as
much. Whether these peasants are settled onkhutorsor in
communes, their paupers’ living conditions will not be changed in the
slightest. If you haveseven dessiatines of bad land for your whole family, while your landlord
neighbour has 2,000 dessiatines of excellent land, the result will be
almost the same as under serfdom, no matter whether you live on akhutoror in a commune.

Hungrypeople are being deluded with talk aboutkhutorsor
communes, about a buckwheat pie or a cabbage pie. Mean while they have to
eat turnip tops and live on marshy or sandy land; they have to do
corvée for using the watering-place, the pastures and ploughlands.

Bymeans ofkhutorsattempts are being made to create “small
landlords” to defend the big ones. But millions and tens of millions of
peasants will starve even more in consequence.

InWestern Europe, a really rapid and successful development of
agriculture occurredonly whereall survivals of feudal oppression
had been completely abolished.

Inthe genuinely free countries, where agriculture is well organised,
there remains only one force that is crushing the peasant and the worker:
the force of capital. There is only one way of countering this force—a
free alliance of the wage-workers and ruined peasants. Such alliances will
develop into a new social system under which cultivated lands, efficient
machinery, steam and electricity will serve to improve the life of the
working people themselves, and not to enrich a handful of millionaires.